Three sustainability initiatives on campus

One of the great things going on at the university are the sustainability initiatives.

In the month of April, the Ontario Tech Blue Team hosted Earth Month where every week there was an activity planned for students to promote sustainability and the environment. Glow in the Dark Yoga, Recycle Mania and Guided Nature Walk were among the events that happened.

Here are three sustainability initiatives around campus you’ll want to check out:

1. The Pollinator Project

This project is the one that got me involved in the sustainability initiatives on campus. In 2016, 200,000 bee colonies that were growing in the Windfields Farmland’s barn walls were re-homed.

Currently there are 31 hives on Windfields Farm which are used to produce wildflower honey that is packaged and sold on campus (it's seriously delicious!).

A 2.8-hectare pollinator garden surrounding the farm supports these bees with pollinator-friendly plants.

The university also offers a community garden that is open to staff, faculty and gardeners to grow various plants in 10-by-14-foot-plots. Any produce grown in excess is donated to Feed the Need Durham and St. Vincent’s Kitchen.

3. Transportation

To promote carpooling, the university had Carpool Week back in February 2018.

This involved logging your trips onto the Smart Commute website, a tool to track your transportation and winning some amazing prizes like a $500 voucher for VIA rail. Look out for more events like these in the following school year.

There’s even a mobile carpooling app created at the university called Blancride that connects drivers and passengers who share similar routes.

Ontario Tech University is the brand name used to refer to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

The university is proud to acknowledge the lands and people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation which is covered under the Williams Treaties. We are situated on the Traditional Territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation which includes Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi.